Apple device owners who want to store their music collections in the cloud and listen to them on their iOS-powered devices had better keep waiting for iTunes Match. Using competing services like Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive, it would appear, is off-limits for iPhone and iPad owners. There’s a setting within iOS 5 to activate iTunes Match, but the feature won’t work until the next version of iTunes is released.
Apple recently pulled a third party app that let users stream music from their Amazon cloud locker, reportedly due to legal concerns.
Interactive Innovation Solutions, the company that built the app, also has an iOS app called gMusic that does the same thing for Google Music. Google’s beta music service is officially only available on desktops and Android-powered devices, but this workaround effectively brings it to iPhones, iPhones and iPod Touch devices. So far, the gMusic app has remained in the iTunes Store, although its developer tells Evolver.fm that a recent app update he submitted has been stalled by Apple.
Where’s iTunes Match?
iTunes Match, Apple’s somewhat different answer to Google and Amazon’s cloud lockers, was unveiled by Steve Jobs alongside iOS 5 in June, but the service has yet to be activated. When iOS 5 was launched last month, Apple said we should expect to see iTunes Match by the end of October, a deadline that has obviously passed now that November is here.
For iOS users who have grown impatient, it looks like trying one of Apple’s competitors isn’t an option for now. This is one of the limitations of this still-emerging space. Services like Google Music and iTunes Match ostensibly allow people to free their music from the confines of local storage and listen to them from any Internet-connected device. Yet, as this incident illustrates, such freedom comes with its limitations.
